Oh, and major telcos were (for the most part) complacent beasts that put the interests of shareholders before their customers.

Well, nearly all of that has changed....

Apart from the anticipated technological advances (faster, cheaper, more intelligent chipsets and components), OTT Web services giants such as Google and Amazon.com Inc., sophisticated device and app developers such as Apple Inc., game-changing infrastructure vendors such as Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and the accelerating creep of the IT giants into the telecom space has turned the industry on its head.

So now it's time for Light Reading to change too.

In the coming months it will undergo a major transformation that will change the way Light Reading serves and interacts with the global communications industry community. When those changes happen they won't be hard to spot.

Not everything is going to change, though.

The goal of the Light Reading editorial team has always been to provide informative, independent and (at times) entertaining coverage of the technology, people, finance and coffee that makes this industry tick. That will continue and of course we'll strive to deliver even better multimedia coverage than ever before, covering hot topics such as Carrier SDN and network functions virtualization (NFV), 1 Tbit/s transport, LTE-Advanced, carrier-grade Wi-Fi, next generation service provider IT (analytics, cloud services enablement, policy control) and Docsis 3.1., among many others.

What will change, though, is the way the Light Reading team will be able to engage with you, the reader, and also how the Light Reading community (that's you again) will be able to interact with each other. (But don't worry -- we're not introducing smellovision just yet....)

In addition, we'll be looking for incisive, informed, independent contributions to the site's content from (you guessed it) you, the readers! (Did you know you were going to be this busy?)

If this is of interest, please get in touch with me at ray.lemaistre@ubm.com.

There will also be some changes to the editorial team at Light Reading, so watch out for some new names and faces in the coming months. (See UBM Appoints Ray Le Maistre Editor-in-Chief of Light Reading.)

All these changes will become apparent during the coming months to anyone who engages with Light Reading and we look forward to hearing from you -- engaging with you online and in person -- about the revamped strategy.

Oh, and in the year 2000, heavy metal band Metallica was suing peer-to-peer file-sharing service Napster for copyright infringement. ... One thing that never changes is that lawyers are always kept busy.

— Ray Le Maistre, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading